‘Too many mothers’ not sufficiently involved in their maternity care despite improvements

Too many women are still not as involved in discussions about their maternity care as they should be. However, services are showing overall signs of progress. That’s the conclusion of healthcare research charity Picker.

Picker conducted the 2025 Maternity Survey for the Care Quality Commission (CQC). It collected the experiences of 16,755 women who gave birth in England throughout January and February 2025.

The survey built on CQC’s national review of maternity services in England, 2022 to 2024. And it offers insight into areas of progress and where there’s a need for further improvement.

In particular, it highlights less positive experiences around raising concerns and involvement in induction decisions.

Maternity survey results

Communication.

Some of the most positive findings in this year’s survey related to communication during antenatal care:

89% of women said that they were “always” spoken to in a way they could understand – up from 88% in 2024 and 86% in 2021.

81% said that they “always” had enough time to ask questions or discuss their pregnancy – an improvement from 80% in 2024 and 73% in 2021.

84% reported “always” feeling listened to – up from 83% in 2024 and 79% in 2021.

Communication during postnatal care has also improved, though remains poorer than in antenatal care.

75% of women felt their personal circumstances were “always” taken into account when they received postnatal advice – an improvement from 72% in 2024 and 73% in 2021.

77% said they “always” felt listened to – up from 75% in 2024 and 76% in 2021.

Getting help and raising concerns.

Among those who raised a concern during their antenatal care, 12% felt it was not taken seriously – down from 13% in 2024 and matching 2023.

This proportion was higher for care during labour and birth, where 18% of women who raised a concern felt it was not taken seriously, down from 19% in 2024 and 2023.

For women who stayed in hospital after birth, only 57% said they “always” got help from staff when needed. This is up from 54% in 2024 but below the 59% reported in 2021.

Involvement.

More than three quarters (77%) of women reported “always” feeling involved in decisions during their labour and the birth of their child. This represented an improvement from 75% in 2024 and is the highest result for five years.

For the first time, women whose labour was induced were asked whether they were given information about all the options available to them. Only 25% said they were told about the option to have increased monitoring without an induction. While 14% said that they were given no information about options available to them.

Jenny King, Chief Research Officer at Picker, said:

The 2025 Maternity Survey provides a valuable snapshot of women’s experiences across England, highlighting areas of real progress, particularly in antenatal communication.

At the same time, the results show there are still challenges to address to make sure women consistently have positive experiences across the whole maternity pathway.

Interim findings from the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, chaired by Baroness Amos, have highlighted that most births are safe but that the worst exceptions can involve tragic failures in care.

Listening to mothers at scale and learning from their feedback is an important way to manage risk and to improve services.

Findings from surveys like this one can provide an early warning where NHS trusts are too often failing to provide high quality, person-centred care.

We are calling on all NHS providers to review their results in detail – including statistics on women’s experiences of antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal care, as well as the narrative feedback the survey gathers – to identify and prioritise areas for local improvement.

Featured image via the Canary